Digital cameras have become prolific in today's world. Digital cameras allow a user to take tens or hundreds of pictures and then transfer the digital pictures from the camera to the user's computer, a printer, a photoediting and printing kiosk, or the like. The digital pictures can then be printed, e-mailed to family and friends, shared with family and friends using photosharing software such as QURIO® peer-to-peer photosharing software, and/or printed onto various products such as mugs, mouse pads, t-shirts, posters, and the like. QURIO® peer-to-peer photosharing software is produced by Qurio Holdings, Inc., 20 Depot Street, Suite 2A, Petersborough, N.H. 03458. In addition, the user may perform various photoediting steps such as red-eye reduction and cropping using photoediting software.
There are two basic problems associated with cropping digital images using traditional photoediting software. One of these problems is that the portion of the digital picture that is removed by cropping is discarded. In order to prevent the portion of the digital picture from being lost, a user must save both the original image and the cropped image. As a result, the user saves multiple versions of the same image, thereby wasting disk space. The second problem is that if the user desires to perform further photoediting tasks such as red-eye reduction or adjusting the contrast of the digital picture after cropping a digital image, the user must edit both the original digital image and any cropped versions of the digital image if consistency is desired.
These problems exist in any type of photoediting software environment ranging from photoediting software on a user's personal computer to photosharing software enabling multiple users to share and edit digital images. One such software environment is the QURIO® photosharing software, wherein a user may desire to order prints of various sizes of a single digital image and/or order numerous different products having the digital image or some portion thereof printed thereon. For example, the different products may each require different crop areas. More specifically, a mouse pad may have a square crop area while a mug may have a rectangular crop area. Similarly, each standard print size, such as 8 inches×10 inches, 5 inches×7 inches, and 4 inches×6 inches, has a different crop area. In order to allow the user to know exactly what portion of the digital image will appear on the product, the user must crop the digital image for each product, thereby creating multiple versions of the digital image and wasting valuable disk space. In addition, any additional photoediting tasks, such as red-eye reduction, must be performed on each of the multiple versions of the digital image.
Thus, there remains a need for a method of performing multiple crops on a digital picture without altering the digital picture such that only one image needs to be saved and any additional photoediting tasks need only to be performed on a single image.